HEART THREAD Parts Seventy-Three and Seventy-Four

73.

Stay out of sunshine walk in the shade

I suppose this place an ancient apple tree

older than Eden and ferns grow round it

it leaves me with no answers

I feel glum and businesslike today

accountant of a bankrupt hardware store

with nothing left but the names of instruments

columns of numbers those birds of the heavens

endlessly fluttering past and vanishing

and O the hawk of zero knows my name

inscribable outstretched beneath him

divide by zero and smile for the police.

 

74.

Some day I'll get this someday wrong

and it will be today, the actual

two schoolchildren performing for assembly

tell of seaweed stars in our flag

what about the starship from the alien planet

why would they bother to come here

why do women wear flowers in their hair

I never wanted to alter your routine

snow or swelter you know better

there are whole cities where the men know less

spell your name the Irish way

then no one can whisper it in local dark.

HEART THREAD Parts Seventy-One and Seventy-Two

71.

If you keep going along this path

no road signs or they all point to heaven

gorse I said or whin or keep you off and green

I am a thing of books and boundaries

a headless god at the bottom of your garden

stone and with a word or two in bad Latin

chiseled in what I took to be my heart

as if the earth needed reminders we are here

or we do and always will, see how the wind

caresses me sun remembers our nights together

we slept on the Hill of Tara her very grass

and never woke all this since is one long dream.

 

72.

Ireland it and look again

woodcock whooshes past through sunset

lives by the No Trespass sign

the fairy mound back there that no one knows but you

though sometimes I think I see them walking there

in and out of the mind’s view

giving names to things and changing back again

the fairies are the editors of earth

rinsing the sinews of our experience

no one can look at the same leaf twice

but one bird can come twice to your hand

carefully choosing random seeds that you extend.

HEART THREAD Parts Sixty-Nine and Seventy

69.

Connect the shortcut with the longer route

the stone that stays in heaven in the lowland hear

we heard a dragon do I know what your eyes mean

while a mile away your lips are saying

spent the morning worshipping a child another child

sea wrack and prophecy read from an old book

older than Bible and full of stones half my New England acre

because the river is the boundary song the failed permission

gladiolus every minute and the blue hydrangea

blooming as we speak but you are silent

crisscross prophecies the bird tells it all

invisible blackbirds piping in the gorse.

70.

Mercy remembers all the strange names

gave to bedfellows ivy and she was thistle

and herself the only mistletoe

semaphore hard to know how come it’s over

the little songs of sinking ships the atoll

lubricious indexes of unread books

I can tell your daydreams from your midnight

because we rode together battered car not far

never count shooting stars the way lovers do

or daisy petals but we were angels too

in love with not being in the body but we were child

and children know the world is just their guess.

Robert Kelly reads in Bard Hall, November 22, 2014

HEART THREAD Parts Sixty-Seven and Sixty-Eight

67.

Poem day they call it in Cathay

Kitaj Ezra Sandra Fisher Thomas Meyer

great ones of a single paradigm

no one but you could understand

the point is to learn your place in the hieroglyph

the paradigm you belong to unknown to each other

the forest of Broceliande Allen Fisher Alan Halsey

Nathaniel Mackey Michael Hartnett

these are the Makers in one long chamber

Wagadu to Erigal that wave of shout

music made them and the earth had sense

they lift the hill like heroes and go in.

 

68.

Everybody’s strong in the sense of saying so

the word hurled all night just said today

it is the breath of Vayu who are you gods of storm

wet wood and anxious trees and bird in trouble

but the sea calm we live in paradox

under the original apple tree among the ferns as far

west as the road lets us go before the rock

topples into silence that boulder smile

I am no man and came here before I was

and before a thought of you troubled the singularity

you angel you meaning of my life with your own wings

I stumble along to keep up with your swift shadow.  

HEART THREAD Parts Sixty-Five and Sixty-Six

65.

Any hand that touches is a dead man’s hand

you feel old Time along your skin

caressing or pressing leaving small scratches

later you can read as words runes or oghams

or just the southern whiteness of your back saying nothing at all

of course we want the body of the other to talk back

what else is other for but revelation

apocatastasis and the whole cosmos reels back to the start

before we were one and two and many, mind

a white sail far out on an old sea

up to you to tell if setting out or coming home

weird cargo and all the sailors sleeping day and night.

 

66.

On the fifth day of the fifth month behooves to mount

highest point on the island view of other islands

what more can a word do but open the door

other words on other words sending sea light before storm

storms remind us of where we’re coming from

so much mercy so little sense we call it police

we live inside it as if it had a roof over it

it has nothing up there but numbers we live in a machine

or we live as a machine this beach is pure numerical

this seven is a diamond ring my mother wore all the time

I saw the same blue light in crystal once in the Himalayas

what was I doing there what was my name.

HEART THREAD Parts Sixty-Three and Sixty-Four

63.

Don’t go to it wait till it comes

harvest in springtime summer will be wet

we hid in caves because caves are most like ourselves

impenetrable far dark dangerous and wet

being there we could be safe from ourselves

a new mind in an old place

we lick the place with fantasy alone

quick shadows on the ceiling  nothing moving on the floor

metallic aftertaste you sucked a leaf of rain

copper in the blood sunshine headaches too

we are the other kind we live beneath you

the highest thing we think is somebody else.

 

64.

Great shapely white bells on the stalk tall as a woman who?

But the rainbow understands such things heavy heavy

but do we deserve what of course you do the moan or muffin

I walk over water as you walk over fire

close to being afraid but love the vista

wanted to offer you intricate syntax

Brownian movement never at peace and even

melodic resolutions suspended over the abyss

exaltations yet to come, confuse us

great Egyptian energy the neters that were axes

stand by the river that was once a human spine

but what a woman! the whole of Africa.

HEART THREAD Parts Sixty-One and Sixty-Two

61.

Not sure what the giving gave a beak in bark

drink your tea he cries a bird instructor on the empty moor

everything climbs o let the creature out

the little lamp that lights our garnet cavern

sweet aquifer deep riddled with ideas

those toxins of thinking those premature concretions

just keep thinking the car’s not there yet

this rolling motion the cello taught the sea

everything began with us we carved the fossils in our sleep

smooth skin rough bark all the pain at once

the world was created ten minutes ago

when you looked out the window and saw the tree.

 

62.

Don’t say a name here say a thing instead

a king grows wary after Pentecost

all those green Sundays and no dragons

God sends sometimes an anchorite to rouse

tepid thinkers to outrageous absences

silence is a dragon of its own

the dear knights try to conquer it with song

I'll never be popular I’m a man

priestless sat together sitting together is a mode of prayer

who benefits from this stone altar

who tastes the woodruff in this May wine

master of the forest undefiled by speech.

HEART THREAD Parts Fifty-Nine and Sixty

59.

Bellini everything yawnless beauty bellezza

footnote to a lifetime folly lived to be wise

I have stared at the sea until it dissolved me

hydrangea who remembers heaven you dream

a new geology  exploring America by dream

find the lost city Beyond The Senses on the plain

my heart or is it soul is waiting for me there

raft me your river hitch me your trailer

lighthouse in the daytime too wink your red eye

aboriginal light light of sea poppies too much said

on the terrace with Zukofsky’s luminous vowels

and the upper bay thronged with Danish ships.

 

60.

Climb up to the cellar of the sky this hill from heaven

o I was brought up with a bone the meat was just remember

data be our only money gold coins in colza fields

I slip them in your pocket from behind rich rich

the clouds walk here before us white cliffs of over

great ship plows up the losses we spring from flowers

birds in your hair the old dog led us home

they sent me to the jungle to look for you

ice and ash seeping from the wellhead wind because

the elements of wanting are another so much was near

Columba or be Yonah bird abaft my shoe

the head moves fast the body slow. 

HEART THREAD Parts Fifty-Seven and Fifty-Eight

57.

If anyone is there to give me need

let me be your favorite machinery

to think you’re meaning something

count the phonemes and link the most frequent

yielding the secret title of your flesh

people walking deep inside the bread

break me open and let me out

you also are imprisoned in this tower

taking care of children may be pyramid enough

for I have gone with you to Egypt once or twice

riding on your shoulder or your hip

counting the stones at Karnak with dead eyes.

 

58.

For I was lapis after all and Danube delta

down there where they still have weather

mind perturbed by mower not what I mean by mind

now long legs warmed by sun renimble

ocelot breakfast but I feed on sight of the sea

let me feel this me I am this place

the goldfinch at the thistle seed answer enough

clouds coming over help me to pronounce

sleep between the syllables and wake re-meant

clouds give the sea its color back come guess at me

Wren’s chapel in the Strand strange altars weary gods

smattered with personality everything revise away.  

HEART THREAD Parts Fifty-Five and Fifty-Six

55.

Falstaff rises from the water subtly changed

his laundry basket floats away downstream

here he’s as wet brand-new as Moses

it takes more than shame to wash old lusts away

rush of the wild ox through fields of barley

the maiden thrilled at last consents

to be cast into the contingency of another’s desire

these are what we forget as we walk mild in the street

caught in the meshes of other people’s fantasies

read Coleridge chapter XIII how little we dare to create

how much we brilliantly remember

use the typewriter at the bottom of the well.

 

56.

There is no mainland it’s all Ocean River

coarse voices of drowned fishermen

finally learn to whisper as the waves kiss shore

hush and hiss and come between our skin

in a child’s voice we hear last echoes of someone else

lost echo Hart Crane to be a poet in America how strange

take the rhymes away and then you’ll see

language is continuous I’m giving you

soft white as new parchment and a bird at my foot

it’s starting again a raft of meaning

floats up and down your spine this trembling reed

as if you were married to a baker and slept in his bread.

HEART THREAD Parts Fifty-Three and Fifty-Four

53.

I can do nothing to help you but go to sleep

in my dream your destiny propose

city after city with huge parks in them

a green so broad it holds an ocean snug

the other side of color is a man

basalt rough carved to look like you

a tree is meditation

crosslegged contemplative of Roquepertuse

graphic reference like a crowded train

filled with drowsy reveries

enough imagework in there to build a Parthenon

but there are no virgins left no ratios.

 

54.

You don’t know where you’re going till you’ve left the place behind

raptacious the old word is a hawk in your head

close to the parapet the first time all Paris known

for I was there in person for a change

not one of Atget’s pigeons the shadow on the wall my own

we live lives parallel with ourselves

from far out at sea you can see the way we move

deed making deed the wind blows it all away

read the wakes of light we leave behind us

parallels meet at the infinity called mind

where you slip your shoes and backpack off

and children chase their gaudy mother down the street.  

HEART THREAD Parts Fifty-One and Fifty-Two

51.

So the sun keeps rising I keep gloom to myself

mockingbird on the rail in love with half an apple

sing to me Caruso sing to me all your arias

you like me can be anybody else

to hide my own song in another’s

they say Pavarotti could not read music

so he had to become Nemorino Edgardo Cavaradossi

flesh became song oh the fat ones we were

to impersonate myself unlock the truth

read the horoscope of strangers

to see the way we stand and move

the Talking Cure without one word being said.

52.

Selvanus must  have been one of our gods

Lord Esus in the woodlot with a hatchet

or we had no gods we had persons

to study the habits of and to revere

because reverence is all

and these holy images of women and of men

make us revere the ones who walk with us

ourselves as much as anybody

if gods are anywhere they must be in you

and you, there are no places we are not

when people are asleep the world goes home

I woke the sun up this morning go to bed with her tonight.

HEART THREAD Parts Forty-Nine and Fifty

49.

Once it begins it knows how to go on

true translation treats the syllable as gold intact

apple-mother guide me through your hedges

you know where the house is you left it there for me

a spot of rain upon the lettuce leaf

trying to begin again without taking life

take form instead and stand like Ely’s lantern

eight brave oak trees bear it up

a thousand years the tallest men in England

still stand the mist her little raft comes through

carrying her sick friend home from poetry

where she will hand-heal every inch of him.

                                                           

50.

My father’s cigars is how it begins

Dutch Masters or White Owl Connecticut leaf

no non-tobacco ingredients no paper filler

but I am all paper the flesh become word

no wonder stopped going to church

we never had Sunday school we weren’t real Americans

no town meetings no whitewall tires

Catholics were just Jews with no money

America is still over there across the bay across the river

America’s where the sun goes down

makes me sad to see this dying glory

Amenti across the Nile commonwealth of the dead.

HEART THREAD Parts Forty-Seven and Forty-Eight

47.

Keep your glasses on tonight you’ll see me in your dreams

because I walk with feet of stone no one can hear

you will hear a ship crying out to the fog

you’ll see my breath condensing on your mirror

don’t worry I’ll be everywhere

keep your white noise machine on all you like

I too am a sound that makes no sense

relax I’m finally talking about myself

you’re safe as long as I go on talking

an apple or an orange is also a machine

no moving parts but you and me

alone at midnight in a broken world. 

 

48.

Man with three hearts

shown on the stone altar by three birds in flight

sky is always the same as your body

that’s how you know where anything is

how anything means

I pray to the weather to exalt the day

god heart beast heart and one more

the heart I gave you was not my own

I offered the whole city to the holy ones

anything you can conceive is yours to give but not to take

what kind of birds are anything

a crow a jay a mockingbird none of these.  

HEART THREAD Parts Forty-Five and Forty-Six

45.

Ogmios tongue me what to tell

halfway to hell I dare make invocation

inspirez-moi the Temple must be built                   C.G.                   tenor solo bare rock in Judaea

teach me how to do this thing you make me do

the hymns of Milarepa thrill from strange obedience

teach me to tell what I don’t know

learn from the babble when you sting my lips

strange means an unknown woman

coming through the door arms full of flowers

I can’t understand a single thing she says

I have no choice but to write it down.

 

46.

Draw a picture of the Temple here

as you imagine it so it shall be

here is a photo of you building it

here is a rainbow to wear around your neck

keeps you safe in battle with the sky

who taught me to work this damned machine

all moving parts are still only the electrons move

rich men keep getting richer as drunkards just stay drunk

there is no doorway to their castle

a house goes on forever like the old Winchester place

money has no natural frontier

the violin mourns the new-fallen king. 

 

HEART THREAD Parts Forty-Three and Forty-Four

43.

Various various a book in the wind

the birds are reading me as best they can

slow down little language I’m only a child

aftermaths are written long before

just find the right page and squeeze it tight

don’t let anybody see you walk that street

it goes to the hospital where they park the mad

those who released themselves from the ordinary

and wouldn’t you if you could get away from it

the badgering of business the noise of news

and you alone on your phantom ship.

 

44.

Through the skirl of the Elgar violin concerto

I hear seagulls squawking over the Isle of Wight

it is 1954 I’m going home at last

the island mentioned in the sea

and every nineteen years at summer solstice

the god dances in the sky above his ring of stones

a temple built from time alone

or I am the one who dances there

me can you imagine me prancing in a cloud

yet he’s there and she is with him

and the two of them inhabit me

if you dare look inside yourself you’ll find me there.

HEART THREAD Parts Forty-One and Forty-Two

41.

Run far enough but do they listen

give them what they want and they’ll come back

fierce dangers of getting what you wish

these are my Moralia guide for the oversexed

lost in the Middle Ages now re-upholstered

in glamorous satin language America America

I call you empty so I wade ashore

open the downturn invade the nucleus

Lincoln enthroned like an emperor

eagle talon’d held together disparate republics

the cure almost worse than the disease

almost and Miss Odessa’s black chess pie.

 

42.

The one good thing about the Bible is footnotes

commentaries hum like flies in the butcher shop

every decent word breeds scores of annotations

the simplest human sentence needs a Mishnah of its own

and then they write that down and before you know it

we need eight billion people on the planet

to pronounce all the declensions of that first verb

volo was it or nolo or gimme or I thirst

write it down as if the flowers might forget

or Egypt turn wet again and Pharaohs shout

and mothers fret about their adolescent sons

and Abel has a secret wife who cards his wool.

 

PLANH

                                                              for A.M., 1946—2014


In the stillness
of his embedded craft
something always left
between the glittering tiles

the shadows of Byzantium
before the terrible differences—

Meddeb is dead, the last
Mediterranean, the last who knew
white desert with kind hands,
the peace of God that only
men disturb, calm
Tiamat coiled behind heaven,

to mourn a decent man
is almost blasphemy,
his life a precept
to be followed not discussed. 

And yet, many grains of sand
in the desert of the mind. 
Grit in my teeth
women waving
white sheets from their balconies.

HEART THREAD Parts Thirty-Nine and Forty

39.

Womb for the ferly folk my mind by day

your old days come true again be born in me

bread broke open to show a beating heart

Saint Mila showed to show that all’s alive

cistern broken but the water rested, tree

fell but the leaves stayed in the sky

perfect in their dispositif origin of stars

I was Melchizedek who priested in the rocks

I sheeped along among my little goats

try to make hale and holy what you can

for this is sparrowland the good

this is sky with stones in it and all of us. 

40.

Actinism life reacting to the sun

as if a schooner came in your childhood

with a pretty nursemaid on it

taught you her language and took you to sea

and you never came back, that would be me 

water is your only comfort aren’t I

slow drip of language from the rock

my father brought me to a mountain spring

who knows where Castalia I think

and when you drink that water you too are sea

and everything is river ever after

now you are everyone because you watched her lips.

 

HEART THREAD Parts Thirty-Seven and Thirty-Eight

37.

Be self-indulgent while a self persists

the birds are gone but men flee work

the tiler has a clipper the hedge is thick

angry voices of the pilgrims bother us

my roof needs re-thatching who are you

are you Madeleine after all all history in your hand

they showed me so many things I took the oath

I felt the sword blade across my Adam’s apple

hoodwinked gladly in the name of love

all our businessmen in masks and music

a secret society made entirely of you

chain the bike and ride the almond tree away. 

 

38.

Cast among minnows the maiden floundered

out of the little brook baring a message

all is revealed we’ve known all along

water drips along the shank her arch is high

light shows through the least of our constructions

only a pyramid can hold all that dark

there’s still some ink left in the world

inscribe yourself in the family Bible use your Hebrew name

hemlock branches make good torches

renew my membership in France

for I was born before the poem ended

the children were still struggling in the apple tree.

HEART THREAD Parts Thirty-Five and Thirty-Six

35.

Am I clear yet of the old diseases

it’s always too late to begin

to be a bird

a story out of a different miracle

pay me for what I don’t do

all poetry is blackmail she was sure

always a veiled threat

dangerous scent of wild roses

do something to something it always says

I am what the author left out

more of an answer than a question like most philosophy

what we don’t need is more answers. 

 

36.

Least eider paddling along the shore

find the secret roads in running water

it goes by but they stay on

in the dark every house Altamira

walk with me the midnight hallways

down the cliffs and over sunken meadows

and never reach the bathroom door

moonrise in the kitchen sink

Uncle Charlie keeps his specimens awake

I rinsed the city and flew out to sea

Bristol of my fisherfolk Sandford of his song

be my ancestor honey be my Palestine.

HEART THREAD Parts Thirty-Three and Thirty-Four

33.

The French called them enfances

stories about the childhood of great men

heroes before they could lift up the sword

we are infants too and we have swords

we call them memories to use against the world

is what just seems to happen

remedium amoris remember the last time

the taste in your mouth the nasty telephone

things never change the way you do

cause without effect tugboat awash in storm

I love the taste of what won’t let me be

thighs of a scarecrow feathers of a clock.

 

34.

Take a long time to work it out

merciless mankind at the mill with slaves

of course I remember my masters

John O’Clock and William Psalm                                 W.S.

brown Thomas and the Jewess of Baltimore         T.B.        G.S.

I am the Middle Ages born again

reviver of dragons mountebank of miracles

three drops of my own blood in the snow

and I was the woman I was the lost Christ

I was the ship to Marseille and the cave in the Vaucluse

I was the stone he stepped on

I was the crown on the soft hair of his head.